Music – 8 hours ago

Dimas Sanfiorenzo

Dimas Sanfiorenzo is the Managing Editor for Okayplayer. He specializes…

Photo Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

Joined by DJ Khaled, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, and John Legend, JAY-Z performed his “God Did” verse live for the first time at the 2023 Grammys.

Hov did. 

JAY-Z closed out the 2023 Grammys by performing his epic 50 bar verse from DJ Khaled’s posse cut “God Did.” It was the first time JAY-Z has performed the verse live. 

The performance started with Rick Ross and then Lil Wayne performing their respective verses. Then they all gathered at a long table — Last Supper style — where JAY-Z was sitting (alongside longtime friends OG Juan and Emory Jones.) And JAY-Z rapped the entire verse — yes all 4 minutes of it. Afterwards, John Legend came out and sung the hook. The performance ended with Khaled bragging about performing an eight minute song on the Grammys. 

“God Did” has only been out for a couple of months but it is already widely considered to be one of the best JAY-Z verses of his career. 

After the song was released Jay did a Twitter Space breaking down the verse. During the chat he talked about the love he got from his fellow rapper peers after it was released. 

“In the verse I say ‘my only goal is to make the real [ones] feel seen,’ and when somebody breaks it down in that way, we all feel seen,” he said. “And it wasn’t me, I got calls from everybody like, ‘man, we needed that right there’ or ‘that was amazing.’ [A$AP] Ferg hit me like, ‘we needed that right there so people [can] articulate and understand what we’re going through.’”

“God Did” was nominated for three Grammy awards: Song of the Year, Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song. The track ended up going 0-3. At least we got a hell of a performance out of it.